Clearing the Browser Tabs, Special Manic Monday Edition

Starting the week, by clearing the decks:

• I hope your Sunday was better than Howard Kurtz’s. Though to be fair, this wasn’t Kurtz’s worst day in recent weeks.

• “NBC Cuts ‘Under God’ From Pledge of Allegiance,” twice during its introduction to its U.S. Open Golf Championship. And they can’t even utter the G-word when issuing the standard leftist “to those of you who were offended by it” non-apology apology later. But why does NBC invariably choose its sports shows to remind us that it answers to a very different religious calling than the majority of its viewers?

• Iowahawk tweets, “John Malkovich sends Guardian interviewer into fetal ball” when he tells him that “I’ve read more books on the Middle East than any British journalist.” Watch here (warning: video may auto-play). The cutline on the Guardian Webpage that accompanies is “why [Malkovich] won’t take lectures on politics from the Guardian” — I don’t know why, when those Grauniad writers can be so darn sassy.

• The New Republic discovers the correlation between a lack of self-control and poverty. Thus arriving, ten years late, to the same conclusion provided by the entire oeuvre of Theodore Dalrymple.

• More on the intersection of poverty and lack of self-control: “What, me worry? Young adults get self-esteem boost from debt.”

• Gunga-galunga, comrade: “‘I’m a Marxist,’ Dalai Lama tells Chinese students.” Nice to see a man belong to two religions concurrently.

• “Rock n’ Roll Used to Be About Personal Liberty” — but largely hasn’t been for about 45 years now.

• Speaking of music, I felt even more ancient than usual after this.

• “The White House press office reports that Obama’s views on gay marriage are ‘evolving,'” Tom Maguire writes. So when does Barack Obama get the box o’glitter treatment from Code Pink to help speed the process along?

• “The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters — or about the thickness of a fingernail — every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.” No wonder Obama thought his mere presence in the White House would cause the oceans to recede.

• The president has certainly caused the economy to recede, and with it, Gaia worshipers “seem to at least be waking up to the fact that the world is on the precipice of financial ruin and nobody is much interested in sinking themselves further just to push this group’s agenda.”

• As I said on election night, and then repeated shortly after Obama took office in a video, you and I have a rendezvous with scarcity: “America flirts with a fate like Japan’s,” Clive Crook writes in the Financial Times. To understand why in a microcosm, just pay a visit to The Island of Mayor Moreau.

• And given the preview offered by the current feeble state of transnational socialist Europe, America’s exploding debt likely won’t have a very pretty ending.

• “The Madness of Cesar Chavez” — Chavez turned into fellow California socialist/cult leader Jim Jones so slowly, I hardly even noticed. Kudos to the center-left Atlantic for deflating the myths of left-wing icon — though as with the Sorelian myths built around so many historical figures of the left, watch for this to have zero impact on the port side of the aisle. This ship can’t be sunk, no matter how crazy the captain is.

• Oh and speaking of California, Doug Ross find the “Daily Beast shocked that Jerry Brown is leading California to fiscal disaster; blames state’s collapse on …(wait for it)… Republicans.” And that’s before Jerry’s long-held wish to tax Amazon has become reality. Will the last business leaving California turn off the Al Gore Curly-Fry Bulb on your way out?

• Since we’re on the topic of the Daily Beast, the fellas at I Hate The Media note that Newsweek, it’s dead-tree arm, is increasingly looking as shaky as California itself: “Cutbacks: Can it still be called Newsweek if it doesn’t come out every week?” But if an opinion magazine that isn’t read by anyone anymore skips a week or two, will anyone notice?

• Neo-Neocon explores “The Kennedy conspiracists’ conspiracy:” Neo writes, “Although most of the people who believe in the various conspiracies are probably sincere in their beliefs, many of those who actually write the conspiracy books are not. They are lying and they know it, but they count on their readers not to realize this.” Oliver Stone? Lying? Heaven forfend.

• When Jon Stewart makes less sense about media bias than Chris Matthews, he might to check his premises a bit more carefully. Or was the clown nose on during this riff?

• Finally, to paraphrase James Lileks, when art contains vomit, we should take it at its word.

(Concept via Jimmie Bise.)